Here:
"You know, points have been made and we'll continue to make points, but I think the country really is ready for the narrative coming, libertarian Republican narrative, also because we have been losing as a national party. We are doing fine in congressional seats but we're becoming less and less of a national party because we don't win on the West Coast, we don't win in New England. We really struggled all around the Great Lakes."
"Libertarian Republican" is an oxymoron, kind of like "Reagan Republican". The Libertarian Party in the United States characteristically considers itself successful when it defeats Republicans, not Democrats. Taking over the Republican Party from within is simply another version of this.
Both libertarians and Reaganites are essentially Democrats on the social issues but Republican to the extent that Republicans believe in the free market, which actually is where the rub is. They make a lot of noise protesting their social conservatism, but when the rubber hits the road they do nothing about it legislatively. Meanwhile the country continues to reset to the left on the social issues with every passing year. This is not by accident.
Since neither group gains traction in the Democrat Party on the economic front, the Democrats having sold out long ago to socialism and social license, they both naturally come to the Republican Party to play, where they are partly welcome but eventually cause trouble. The problem is both groups alienate the social conservative base of the Republican Party to one degree or another, and then can't quite convince the Republican establishment either, which is still economically liberal in its orientation and currently is based in the Bush clan. There's a reason, after all, why the Republicans continue to nominate economic liberals like Bush 43, McCain and Romney who do not naturally exude free market principles.
Reagan Democrats succeeded in the Republican Party because they made successful alliances with both Republican factions, which are otherwise so divided they cannot stand on their own. They need liberals of one kind or another to win, either libertarian social liberals or Democrats recovering from the economic radicalization of the Democrat Party, like Ronald Reagan. When Republicans do win with this help, they call it conservatism but still govern from the left, whether it takes the form of Reagan's 1986 tax reform with its hidden mandates and expansions of middle class welfare or George W. Bush's guns and butter in the Wars on Terror and Drugs for Seniors.
The libertarians will not be able to reduplicate this achievement, however, because under their banner fly all the fruits, nuts and flakes Republicans have always identified as socially fringe characters with whom there can be no agreement, while their doctrinaire free market devotion will preclude compromise with the Republican establishment's tax and spend liberals which they will need to win.
As ever, the Republican Party is a house divided against itself, which is why Pres. Obama just loves Pres. Abraham Lincoln.
